Wednesday, 16 July 2014

Let's play 'hide the sausage'!

Cro and I are swapping roles for a bit - he is having a rant about the Israel/Palestine situation, and I am going to do something about food again. He should be alright - I don't think those Palestinian rockets can reach France - yet.

Today's breaking news is that a sausage cartel has been uncovered in Germany. All the sausage manufacturers seem to have got together in a secret location to fix the price of wurst.

The broadcaster who broke this news this morning, had a hard job keeping a straight face when describing the seriousness of the situation - made harder by all the sausage jokes put out by his colleagues sitting beside him:

About the German, vegetarian pessimist: He fears the wurst.

I have often wondered why the humble/noble sausage inspires inexhaustible scope for humour, given the gruesomeness of its ingredients and manufacture, but when it is embroiled in a scandal played out as a drama of skulduggery in the Land of Sausages, the scope for taking the traditional piss becomes limitless.

A new recipe: 'Sausage Embroiled in Scandal'. We have our own West Country sausage recipe involving the local booze, as in: 'She likes a sausage in cider!'

I have only once lost my sense of humour with regard to sausages, and that was in a German restaurant at about midnight, when the only available dish on the menu was blutwurst.

Occasionally I like a bit of the English Black Pudding, not only because that it tastes quite nice, but also on the grounds that if you have decided to eat meat, you shouldn't be prissily squeamish about eating all of it - if you eat beef, then you are eating the blood in the veins anyway, but they bleed pigs after slaughter so why throw it away or waste it as compost?

So the blutwurst turned up on a plate surrounded by a mound of steamed cabbage and a small pile of potatoes. It looked very bland and boring - until I cut into it.

The sausage turned out to be a deceptively pale sac filled with bright red, liquid blood which flooded the plate as soon as I cut it, turning the potato and cabbage into little islands set in a lurid sea.

My mom, being the Polish one, had a lot of duck's blood soup as a child. I never had it. My father, who was a cook/chef, had it when it was served to him when they were 'courting'. He had some not-so-nice things to say about it, from what I understand.

I love sausage. And when I tried to be a vegetarian, it was sausage that drew me back to being a meat eater. That and steak. And lamb.

Yes, indeed I can. I go there each time I return to Berlin. It is on Mehringdamm just before the Ubahn and by some shops and a sports bar where I happily go alone. The stall is always crowded with local people.